Put it this way: Blur without Graham Coxon is
like The Rolling Stones without Keith Richards. You wouldn't totally want to deny Mick Jagger the
right to create good music without his druggy-dreary pal (and he did create
some good music on his own), but it wouldn't be Rolling Stones music unless
he'd manage to dig out Keith Richards' identical twin on guitar. As for Damon
Al­barn — not only did he not bother at all about digging out Graham Coxon's
identical twin, but he pretty much decided that Blur's next album would be all
right with no guitar at all, or, at
least, as little of it as possible. Who ever laid down the law about each new
Blur album having to be guitar-based, anyway? Nothing about that in the
recording contract, for sure.

The real problem with Think Tank, however, is not that it is not a «proper Blur album»:
the real problem is that it is simply not a very good album, period. The
Albarn/Coxon relationship was, in fact, very similar to the Jagger/Richards one
in that the former partner brought in the «coolness» and the latter brought in
the meat'n'potatoes. Now that there is no more meat'n'potatoes, it turns out,
somehow, that «coolness», on its own, results in much more confusion than
admiration. Think Tank may very well
have been designed in a think tank indeed — it sizzles and bursts with creativity-a-plenty,
nary a single track following in the shoes of any preceding one — but as «creative»
as these compositions are, most of them are fairly meaningless, designed just
for the purpose of sitting there and looking cool.

Interestingly, two out of three singles culled
from the album had some of its least experimental and «tamest» songs as
A-sides: ʽOut Of Timeʼ and ʽGood Songʼ are soft rhythmic ballads, show­casing
Damon's tender-and-gentle side and even featuring a romantic Spanish guitar
solo passage on the former. Actually, ʽOut Of Timeʼ has become one of the few songs
here to endure, later to be incorporated into the regular Blur setlist with
Graham returning — still I am not impressed, what with the rather primitive
melody and Damon's inability to forge out a proper hook (even if the "you
haven't found the time... to open up your mind" bit seems like an explicit
melodic quota­tion from ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ). It is curious, though, that with
all the «crazy» ideas explored on the album, the maximum promotion was
allocated for its easily-accessible, sentimental bits: apparently, Albarn cares
a lot about the «crooner» side of his image.

The second single, however, was ʽCrazy Beatʼ,
and it is horrible. I used to think the guttural-elec­tronic "crazy beat,
crazy beat, crazy beat yeah yeah yeah" bits were a parody on Crazy Frog, but
apparently, the infantile Crazy Frog phenomenon only arose about half a year afterThink Tank hit the stores, so we will have to assume it was
Albarn's own folly. The song borrows the cool-arrogant-bastard attitude of Parklife and wastes it in a setting
punctuated with hyper-moronic embellishments (intentionally ugly harmonies,
guitars, and electronics) — I mean, at least ʽSong 2ʼ was honestly funny, and
straightforwardly parodic, but ʽCrazy Beatʼ just has this "let's go
CRAAAZY!" vibe, unfunny, mean, and manipulative. Without knowing for sure,
I bet it must have been a real big hit in the clubs, but that does not make it
any less stupid, only more harmful.

Most of the other tracks follow in the «crazy»
footsteps of ʽCrazy Beatʼ, though, thankfully, few reach that level of annoyance.
For ultra-extra-hipness, Albarn drove the band to Marrakesh, where they hooked
up with local musicians to add a pinch of «world music» — something I have
barely noticed upon first listen, to be honest, because it just does not feel
as if all the elements of Britpop, electronica, and Eastern music mesh in
naturally. Maybe it's all about the poorness of the mix, where frequently there
is a lot of stuff happening in the background, but it all sounds like noisy
garbage, or, at best, like distant echoes. Instead of «colorful», the entire
record has this dirty-gray feel of the album cover, irritating and alienating
rather than intriguing and mystifying. Some critics have called Think Tank «warm» and «inviting» —
personally, I feel it's about as warm and inviting as a sheetmetal factory, but
hey, some people like to be invited
to sheetmetal factories. Get a taste of real life and all that.

Some of the grooves are nicely somber, like the
R&B exercise of ʽBrothers And Sistersʼ (still spoiled by completely
gratuitous electronic trickery), and some of the combinations work, like the
lo-fi kiddie melody of ʽJetsʼ exchanging phrasing with its overweight, grumbly,
distorted bassline (but why six minutes? why the out-of-nowhere sax solo?). In
fact, as I said, almost every song has at least some creative idea in its
favor, which is why I cannot bring myself to condemning the record. But on the
whole, it is an absolute triumph of form over substance — as if with the de­parture
of Coxon, the band pretty much lost its soul. They retained the will to
experiment — in fact, they have developed a crazier drive for experimentation
than ever — but they forgot that experimentation has to have a purpose, and
even more so in the 21st century, when «crazy stuff for the sake of sheer
craziness» has pretty much become a boring cliché. As time goes by, I feel less
and less interested in Think Tank,
when all the previous Blur albums still retain their fresh­ness and vitality to
a certain degree. So much for «hipness» in all its glory.